Ready Check: Twin Val'kyr

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The Twin Val'kyr encounter is the fourth and penultimate battle in the Trial of the Crusader. In this fight, your raid will face down two Val'kyr bosses. They are identical in every way, except for the nature of their attacks. Fjola Lightbane will attack you with the power of the Light. Her sister is Eydis Darkbane attacks you with the power of the Dark.

The Twin Val'kyr fight is a confusing one. However, e should be careful not to mix up confusing with difficult. But we should at least be honest and acknowledge that keeping track of the "Stand in Light" and "Attack the Dark" can get pretty mindbending. To sum up, you get light and dark buffs that protect you from your aligned source of damage, and buffs you when you do damage to your opposite.

So, while this fight's pretty easy once you get the handful of maneuvers down, it can be confusing to talk about.

Both of the Twin Val'kyr share a single health pool, which is convenient because it means the only thing you have to worry about is what raid positioning works best for you. Let's take a look at their abilities. Even though there are two Val'kyr, I'm going to list them a single time. They do the same stuff, it's only whether it's the Dark version or the Light version you need to worry about.

Twin Val'kyr

Essence - Fjola Lightbane is a Light creature. She takes less damage from raid members who are imbued with Light Essence, but takes increased damage from raid members with Dark Essence. Eydis Darkbane is a Dark creature, which means she takes less damage from folks with the Dark Essence and more damage from folks with Light Essence.

Twin Spike - Inflicts 100% weapon damage and increases all damage taken by the target by 20%.

Shield of Lights (Lightbane) - Absorbs 175,000 damage in 10 man, and 700,000 damage in 25 man. It also prevents spell interruption. This ability is cast immediately before Twin's Pact, and protects the Val'kyr during the ability. Darkbane's version is called Shield of Darkness.

Twin's Pact - Heals the Twin Val'kyr for 50% of their total health. This ability can be interrupted, but you have to get the Twin's Shield down first.

Power of the Twins - Increases Physical damage done and hit chance by 20%. Each twin uses this power while the other is casting Twin's Pact.

Light Vortex (Lightbane) - Inflicts significant Light damage every second for 5 seconds. It only affects people who have Dark Essence. Darkbane's version is Dark Vortex, and only affects people under the influence of Light Vortex.

Putting it together

When the fight starts, you will immediately see white and black portals appear in each corner of the Coliseum. Your raid members will each be able to choose an "essence" by clicking one portal or another. If you click a white portal, you will get the Light Essence. If you click the black portal, you will get the Dark Essence.

In general, everyone in the raid wants to be an opposite Essence to the Twin they are fighting. The Dark Essence users want to be blowing up Lightbane, while the Light Essence users should be attacking Darkbane. The exception to that rule is the tank for each boss, which also brings us to the first of three tricks for this fight. Assign one tank to Lightbane and one tank to Darkbane.

The first trick to watch out for is Lightbane's Light Vortex and Darkbane's Dark Vortex. When a Val'kyr casts their Vortex, everyone who is the opposite essence needs to quickly align their essence to be the SAME as the Val'kyr casting the Vortex. This is because when the Vortex successfully casts, everyone who is the opposite will get blown up by the massive damage. Once the Vortex is over, switch back to your normal configuration.The next trick to keep an eye out for is Twin's Pact, which will do a massive heal to the Twins. But to interrupt that ability, you first have to blow through the Shield. All of your DPS must switch to the opposite color as soon as possible, in order to get the Shield down in time. Once that's happened, go back to your normal essence and proceed.

The last things are the the black and white orbs that float around. If they hit a person with the opposite buff, the orb will do damage. If they hit a person with the same color buff, they will add stacks of Powering Up. When you get a full 100 stacks of Powering Up, you get a super-duper damage buff for a few seconds. So, try and pick up the orbs of your own color. Not only will you protect your raid members against damage, you'll get to buff your damage considerably!

This fight sounds like a pain in the butt, and it is until you get the knack of when to go Light and when to go Dark. In general, you want to be opposite of the person you're killing. Everyone should be killing the Val'kyr who's about to use Twin Pact. The exception for when you want to be opposite is when a Val'kyr is casting Vortex, at which point everyone wants to be the same color as that Val'kyr.

Give it a few shots, and give yourself a chance to knock out the kinks. Once you've done it a couple of times, you'll find this fight incredibly easy. The fight itself supplies you all the tools you need to buff your DPS and blow through it, so have confidence that once you get it down, it will be easy.

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